She had woken in a dark cellar, surrounded by empty, broken kegs. She had been robbed, most of her armour stripped away. Sword and knife gone. The ache between her legs told her that worse had happened. Lips puffed and cut by kisses she had never felt, her hair tangled and matted with blood, she crawled across greasy cobbles to curl up against a stained brick wall. Stared out numbly on the panicked scene.
Smoke had stolen the sky. Brown, murky light, the distant sound of battle – at the harbour front to her left, and along the north and east walls ahead and to her right. In the street before her, citizens raced in seemingly random directions. Across from her, two men were locked in mortal combat, and she watched as one managed to pin the other, then began pounding the man’s head against the cobbles. The hard impacts gave way to soft crunches, and the victor rolled away from the spasming victim, scrambled upright, then limped away.
Doors were being kicked down. Women screamed as their hiding places were discovered.
There were no Tiste Edur in sight.
From her right, three men shambling like marauders. One carried a bloodstained club, another a single-handed sickle. The third man was dragging a dead or unconscious girl-child by one foot.
They saw her. The one with the club smiled. ‘We was coming to c’llect you, Acquitor . Woke up wanting more, did ya?’
She did not recognize any of them, but there was terrible familiarity in their eyes as they looked upon her.
‘The city’s fallen,’ the man continued, drawing closer. ‘But we got a way out, an’ we’re taking you with us.’
The one with the sickle laughed. ‘We’ve decided to keep you to ourselves, lass. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you safe.’
Seren curled tighter against the wall.
‘Hold there!’
A new voice. The three men looked up.
Iron-haired, blue-eyed – she recognized the newcomer. Maybe. She wasn’t sure. She’d never seen armour like that before: she would have remembered the blood-red surcoat. A plain sword at the stranger’s left hip, which he was not reaching towards.
‘It’s that foreign bastard,’ the man with the club said. ‘Find your own.’
‘I just have,’ he replied. ‘Been looking for her the last two days-’
‘She’s ours,’ said the sickle-wielder.
‘No closer,’ the third man growled, raising the child in one hand as if he meant to use the body for a weapon.
Which, Seren now saw, he had done already. Oh, please be dead, child. Please have been dead all along …
‘You know us, foreigner,’ the man with the club said.
‘Oh yes, you’re the terrors of the shanty town. I’ve heard all about your exploits. Which puts me at an advantage.’
‘How so?’
The stranger continued walking closer. She saw something in his eyes, as he said, ‘Because you haven’t heard a thing about mine.’
Club swung. Sickle flashed. Body whipped through the air.
And the girl-child was caught by the stranger, who then reached one hand over, palm up, and seemed to push his fingertips under the man’s chin.
She didn’t understand.
The man with the club was on the ground. The other had his own sickle sticking from his chest and he stood staring down at it. Then he toppled.
A snap. Flood and spray of blood.
The stranger stepped back, tucking the girl-child’s body under his right arm, the hand of his left holding, like a leather-wrapped handle from a pail, the third man’s lower jaw.
Horrible grunting sounds from the staggering figure to her right. Bulging eyes, a spattered gust of breath.
The stranger tossed the mandible away with its attendant lower palate and tongue. He set the child down, then stepped closer to the last man. ‘I don’t like what you did. I don’t like anything you’ve done, but most of all, I don’t like what you did to this woman here, and that child. So, I am going to make you hurt. A lot.’
The man spun as if to flee. Then he slammed onto the cobbles, landing on his chest, his feet taken out from under him – but Seren didn’t see how it had happened.
With serene patience, the stranger crouched over him. Two blurred punches to either side of the man’s spine, almost at neck level, and she heard breastbones snap. Blood was pooling around the man’s head.
The stranger shifted to reach down between the man’s legs.
‘Stop.’
He looked over, brows lifting.
‘Stop. Kill him. Clean. Kill him clean, Iron Bars.’
‘Are you sure?’